The Art of F.O.M.O. at the Tidal X Concert

The lineup of the year included Beyonce, Jay Z, and a (no-show) Prince. Was it too good to be true?

Let's start this off by noting that Prince wasn't there.

He was billed on the flier for the big Tidal concert at the Barclays Center on Tuesday. He wasn't actually present, which was something of a bummer (though a manageable one!), but only because everything is 300 percent improved when Prince is in the building.

In a way, it was a pretty good indicator of what was to come. On paper at least, attending Tidal X seemed like too nuts of an opportunity to pass up. A free concert of superstars with a collective net worth rivaling the GDP of Granada! Brought to you by HTC! And to all the people who watched the concert via the Tidal live-stream, or in 15-second bursts on the Instagram hashtag, the concert may have even resembled the once-in-a-lifetime Illuminati Woodstock that it was billed as. Jay was there, of course. Beyonce and Nicki. And so were Weezy, Fab, Usher, Nas, and T.I.

It had all the cool of "Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 147" printed on vinyl and sold exclusively at the Williamsburg Urban Outfitters.

This wasn't an accident. Manufacturing cultural import through sheer force of spectacle happens to be Tidal's one great strength. In between sets, at least twenty men in shadowy black shirts changed the stage with the mechanical efficiency of a NASCAR pit crew. High-fi cameras were ominously positioned on long robotic arms around the stage, trapping the performers in the center of a thumpy Panopticon. A giant Tidal logo dangled from the rafters, like a giant geometric whale in the middle of an aquarium.

Inside Barclays, the mood was considerably more reserved than the photos and clips that were 'grammed. It was almost sleepy. There were the occasional flashes of greatness—Mr. and Mrs. Carter murked the joint with a snarling rendition of "Holy Grail." (Who knew Beyoncé could out-JT Justin Timberlake?) Maybach Music Group—Rick Ross, Meek Mill, French Montana, etc.—were all wearing expensive jackets and putting their arms around one another. Travi$ Scott was a no-show. A$AP Ferg popped out in a cozy camo ensemble, though they identified a different guy as him on the big screen. Nick Jonas did his squinchy-faced, sexy Nick Jonas thing in his ongoing mission to prove that he was the coolest Jonas this whole time. Relative newcomer Justine Skye, dressed in a drape-y gold pantsuit that made her look like a Christmas vision, earned what I imagine to be a few dozen busloads of new fans. And Beyonce and Nicki Minaj leveled everyone in their way as the night's standouts, no pants necessary.

It was a show engineered for the scroll-y thumbs of the Spotify generation: a bright flurry of one-offs with no real method to the order—rapid-fire pace, back-to-back performances, each performer limited to one or two songs before it was on to the next one. A woman in the row in front of me, flanked by a pair of empty chairs, had her iPhone hooked up to a Mophie, perhaps because she was on Shazam the whole night.

The show was somehow both awesome and dull, like hitting shuffle on a playlist consisting solely of songs from the Billboard Top 100. It had all the cool of "Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 147" printed on vinyl and sold exclusively at the Williamsburg Urban Outfitters.

At one point, a Jimmy Kimmel producer came onstage and directed the crowd to cheer for some B-roll. The crowd was not up to the ask. He would wave his arms frantically and beg people to scream louder, harder, longer. After three takes, he shrugged, said "Good enough!" and disappeared. We didn't see him again.